Chris Plush - Weapons Volume 1 – Modeling - CGMasters Video Training Course

For those that are hard core Blenderheads you will likely know about CG Masters.  They are a Blender based studio that has produced many high quality Blender training courses.  I have reviewed many of their products before and all of them have been of exceptionally high quality and worth cost and time that it takes to watch them all.

A long while back I was contacted by Chris Plush of CG Masters and asked if I would like to review his latest course.  I agreed, but unfortunately I had issues which resulted in it taking me a long time in getting around to watching the course so that I could review it.  I have now been able to get enough spare time to watch all of the course.  You won't be surprised to learn that just like all their other products this one is of the same high standard.

Product Specifications:

• Name : Weapons Volume 1 – Modeling
• Author : Chris Plush
• Price : $60 (On 23 May 2016)
• Runtime: 10+ hours
• Shop URL : http://www.cgmasters.net/training-dvds/weapons-volume-1-modeling/
• Format: DVD/Download

This time around the course covers the modeling of a bolt action rifle with telescopic site and other relevant parts of the rifle.

I have not reviewed many weapon modeling tutorials so it was a refreshing change for me.

I am not a fan of guns but I know a lot of Blender modelers are so having a high quality course on the topic will be a welcome addition to the Blender educational environment.  Even if you are not a gun nut you will still find this course very useful as it shows you many ways to go about tackling how to model surfaces which have properties of hard surface modeling but also have lots of organically curved surfaces, with holes and screws scattered throughout the model of the gun.

Along with the first volume of this course Chris will be releasing a series of free tutorials covering texturing for the rifle.

I reviewed the downloadable version of the course which consists of almost  7 gigabytes of file data.  So you will need a reasonably fast connection to download all the files.  I had no problem, but if you have a slightly unreliable connection then I would recommend the DVD version of the course.

Once all the files were downloaded and extracted you are left with a folder which contains all the files to follow along and watch the course.

You can view and access all the content of the course in your web browser or you can go directly to the video and resource directories to access them using whatever software you want to use.

The reference images that are used to model the rifle are included as is the completed model which is released under creative commons license.

The course I would say is easy enough to follow for a Blender beginner, so seems to me to be open to all even those with almost no experience of Blender use.

The most important part of the course are the video files.  They are very well made and encoded, very clear viewing and good sound with Chris's narration.  There are 23 video files split into 2 sections.

The first section of videos cover the basics of setting up and using Blender and also covers some of the basic tools used throughout the course.  Section 1 will be very useful to new Blender users and will allow them to understand what is described in later parts of the course.  Of particular impressive note to me was the explanation of various modeling terminology.

Chris uses the bevel modifier extensively through the course and he has a very good description of some of the most important options.

There are some simple basics videos covering how fix certain issues caused by the bevel modifier.  Even an intermediate Blender user should find some of the information in those videos very useful.

With the overview and basic tutorials out of the way Section 2 videos cover the main process of creating the parts of the gun model.

Chris covers the preliminaries of setting up reference images in Blender.  Chris uses images assigned to planes rather than Blender background image feature.  This gives Chris a lot more flexibility, I especially liked the tip of offsetting the planes so that you can see the various reference points of the images.  As was putting the reference planes on their own layer so that they cannot be accidentally altered.

From this point on in the course the various parts of the gun are modeled:

• Gun Barrel
• Gun Bolt
• Gun Stock
• Gun Receiver
• Small details (screws etc.)
• Gun Sight
• Gun Magazine
• Gun Butt
• Gun Telescopic Scope
• Scope Mounts

While modeling the parts of the gun various tools are used and some clever techniques to accurately preserve curved surfaces with Blender's vertex projection tool is covered.

Because a gun is a combination of curved and flat surfaces the different techniques for hard surface and curved surfaces modeling are covered completely.  Chris is very adept at modeling with both methods.  While modeling the gun occasionally there are times when Chris had to create parts of the gun with triangular faces but these places are few in number and only in places where the model is flat and so will not be affected by the triangles.  Chris does get rid of a lot of the triangles and shows various techniques to do that.

Modeling a curved surface is often a taxing thing to do when modeling an object but Chris demonstrates some clever techniques using the Lattice Deform Modifier to create curved surfaces without having to do it manually.

Chris can model holes both manually and using the Boolean Modifier.  Generally the Boolean Modifier is looked down upon by modelers but if you know what you are doing it can be a very effective tool for creating holes in a model.  Chris clearly demonstrates this while progressing with the modeling of the various gun parts.

Together with an extensive use of the Edge Split Modifier is also demonstrated showing you have to control the sharpness of edges so they are not affected by the Bevel Modifier.

Another useful tip from Chris was the use of Camera Clip Start value to enable you to zoom very close in on a model so as to prevent zooming through the mesh of the model.

As well as the clear narration from Chris at a few points throughout the videos are various popup notes which explains certain features and changes for Blender.  These are very handy.

One of Blender's newer features that Chris explained was CTRL+SHIFT+R feature which makes two edge loops which surround a central loop.  This is a real time saver.

Since a lot of the time the same processes are carried out repeatedly Chris but these parts of the videos are put into time lapse mode so as not to waste time watching something you know how to do already.

When modeling screws and bolts of the gun the Blender Bolt addon is used.  This is a very quick way of making screws and this addon is very useful.

After all the major  parts of the gun have been modeled the final part of the course goes into final tidying up of the model.  One thing that I found very useful was the use of Matcaps to make it easier to see if a model has any shading issues caused by bad mesh geometry.  Switching on Matcap did show some issues and Chris goes over how to fix those issues.

If you are interested in guns or if you are interested in learning how to do hard/flat surface modeling as well as curved surface modeling, you will get a lot from the course.  I know that a lot of people will be turned off by the model of the gun and would either have liked a different object to have been modeled or for the gun to be more futuristic so it was more interesting to look at.  Remember though that it is the techniques of modeling that are demonstrated that are important in this course not the actual object.

Well worth the money, I can't wait to see the free shading tutorials as well.

Review Score 85%

CG Masters - Master It - Volumes 1 & 2 - DVD Training Review

CG Masters have released another one of their tutorial series this time called "Master It"; 

It's a two volume Blender video training course which is aimed at beginning Blender users.  With it's aim being to take those beginners and give them broad exposure to many of Blenders different tools and features, enabling them to get up and running quickly when using Blender.

This course is presented by Christopher Plush and Aidy Burrows.  Both Christopher and Aidy are very talented Blender users with a lot of Blender knowledge to impart.

Product Specifications:

• Name : Master It - Volumes 1 & 2
• Author : Christopher Plush & Aidy Burrows
• Price : $60 (on 29th November 2013)
• Runtime : 17Hrs 54Min 54Sec
• Format : Download
• Shop URL : http://www.cgmasters.net/training-dvds/master-it/

 

If you decide to purchase this training course then you have two options, you can either buy a physical DVD or you can download an electronic version.  In either case the price of the course is the same and both version present the same material.

The price is one of the first things I noticed.  For $60 dollars you get almost 18 hours of training material.  So the value for money aspect is very high given the quality of the training material.

As with all CG Masters tutorial materials the content is produced to an extremely high quality;  The video and audio are very clear and easy to follow.  With lots of realtime and occasionally timelapsed video recording.  Chris and Aidy are very good an explaing what they are doing throughout their videos.

The materials provided in the course include all the Blend files, videos, textures and final results of all the work for you to examine. You can access the videos and other resources either directly using your own media player of choice, or alternatively access all the content from inside your web browser.

The web browser interface neatly organizes all the course content into manageable sizes allowing you to quickly navigate to the sections that interest you most.

This is a course for beginning Blender users so it is designed to be watched from start to finish and where possible you are advised to follow along and try and carryout the tasks shown in the training videos.

Unlike a lot of beginner type courses this one tries to cover all of the most fundamental features of Blender and it's tools.  By necessity it can't cover every single feature but it does cover a lot of different topics, and most of the important tools and features are covered.

Topics List:

Volume 1 - Section 1 - Welcome To Class 

• Chapter 1 - How To View
• Chapter 2 - Common Terminology

Volume 1 - Section 2 - Understanding Blender

• Chapter 1 - 3D Space
• Chapter 2 - Anatomy Of A Mesh
• Chapter 3 - Saving And Loading
• Chapter 4 - Window Types
• Chapter 5 - Creating A New Layout
• Chapter 6 - Toolbars
• Chapter 7 - Layers
• Chapter 8 - User Preferences

Volume 1 - Section 3 - Working with Blender

• Chapter 1 - Object Mode
• Chapter 2 - Part 1 - Edit Mode & Modeling
• Chapter 2 - Part 2 - Creating A Toon House
• Chapter 3 - The 3D Cursor And Object Origins
• Chapter 4 - The Specials Menu
• Chapter 5 - Materials And Textures
• Chapter 6 - UV Unwrapping
• Chapter 7 - Color, Normal, and Specular Maps

Volume 1 - Section 4 - Lighting and Rendering

• Chapter 1 - Blender Internal VS Cycles Renderer
• Chapter 2 - Camera
• Chapter 3 - Lighting
• Chapter 4 - Lighting And Rendering A Scene

Volume 1 - Section 5 - Modifiers

• Chapter 1 - Introduction to Modifiers
• Chapter 2 - Generate Modifiers
• Chapter 3 - Deform Modifiers

Volume 1 - Section 6 - Animation and Physics

• Chapter 1 - Introduction to Animation
• Chapter 2 - Object Animation
• Chapter 3 - Cannon Blast Exercise

Volume 1 - Section 7 - Game Engine

• Chapter 1 - Introduction
• Chapter 2 - Adding The Main Controls
• Chapter 3 - The Keys
• Chapter 4 - Opening The Door
• Chapter 5 - The Final Product

Volume 1 - Section 8 - Tips And Tricks

• Chapter 1 - Tips And Tricks
• Chapter 2 - Creating Normal And Specular Maps
• Chapter 3 - Normal Maps, Bump Maps, Displacement Maps, Which One Do I Use?

Volume 2 - Section 1 - Acoustic Guitar In Cycles

• Chapter 1 - Setting Up The Blueprints
• Chapter 2 - Modeling The Body
• Chapter 3 - Neck And Headstock
• Chapter 4 - Fretboard
• Chapter 5 - Turning Pegs
• Chapter 6 - Strings
• Chapter 7 - UV Mapping
• Chapter 8 - Creating The Texture Maps
• Chapter 9 - The Environment
• Chapter 10 - Rendering In Cycles

Volume 2 - Section 2 - Game Scene Overview

• Chapter 1 - Baking AO And Shadow Maps
• Chapter 2 - Game Scene Overview

Volume 2 - Section 3 - Finishing The Toon House

• Chapter 1 - Addons - Grass, Ivy, Clouds
• Chapter 2 - Nodes
• Chapter 3 - Finished Toon House Overview

Volume 2 - Section 4 - Cool Extras

• Chapter 1 - More Addons
• Chapter 2 - Cloth Simulation
• Chapter 3 - Face Modeling Made Easy
• Chapter 4 - Making Tileable Textures

As you can see from the topics list above the range of topics covered is very extensive.

Videos range in length from just a few minutes to over an hour.

The course is split between two volumes. The first covers the very basics, while the second volume covers slightly more advanced topics.

The standout part for me in volume one was the creation of a cartoon style house.  Using a select few tools Chris was able to create a very fun looking house.  This house is later improved on in volume two.

The second volume can be thought of as using all the topics and tools covered in the first volume to product bigger more complex projects.  For example volume two goes over how to model and texture a guitar, using all the tools mentioned in the previous first volume.  Volume two also covers various extra features and tools that Blender provides, such as addons and simulation features.

I personally would have prefered more and deeper coverage of the Blender Game Engine and a little more focus on the Shading Nodes of Blender Cycles Render.  Although both Blender Internal features and Blender Cycles render features are covered, a little more coverage of the Cycles nodes would have been welcome.  That said for a beginner course there is more than enough coverage to keep you busy learning and digesting what is in this course for a long time.  Also note that the Blender Game Engine coverage does not cover Python Scripting.  The Video Sequence Editor is not covered but is planned for a future course.

So all in all these two volumes are excellent and will get a beginner up to speed and confident in using Blender very quickly.  Even if you are not a complete beginner you will likely learn something from the second volume with its more advanced coverage.

So two volumes of training videos at this price, with this level of quality, it's a good choice;  If you are wanting to get a handle on Blender they are well worth having.

Review Score 90%

Christopher Plush - Car Modeling & Texturing Video Training Review

Now that it's the start of a new year, it's time for another review of Blender training products.

This time it is another CGMasters training video set created by Christopher Plush covering the topics of Car Modeling And Texturing.

Those that have seen my other reviews know about CGMasters and how they put out very high quality training materials.  So when they contacted me asking if I would mind reviewing their latest creation, I was only too happy to, here's what I found.

Product Specifications:

• Name : Car Modeling And Texturing
• Author : Christopher Plush
• Price : $60 (on 9th Jan 2013)
• Runtime: 10 Hours (roughly)
• Format  Downloadable Video

When you purchase this product you have 2 different options for how you will receive it.  You can either get it in DVD form or you can download it.  I am reviewing the downloadable version, but there is no difference in content between the DVD version and the download version.

The download version was quick to download with my internet connection, so if you have a stable connection you should be okay downloading it.  The download is large though, so be prepared.

Having downloaded all the files and extracted them from their archive, you are left with all the resources you need to get the most out of this training material.  Included in the download are:

• Video files in mp4 format
• All the finished renders
• Textures and Resource and Blueprints
• The Blend files
• Copies Blender 2.64a

So all the things you will need to get started instantly with your learning and car modeling tasks are included and easily accessible.

You can access most of the files and resources directly from inside you web browser.  If you do not want to watch the training materials in your browser you can access the videos directly in your media player of choice.

The web interface is clean and easy to navigate and should make accessing the resources very simple.

While reviewing the videos, they were very clear and very well encoded.  All the videos and other resources were very well organised and easy to find when I needed them.

The video files are split up into many sections ranging from a couple of minutes to 35 minutes in length.  Each video tries to cover a different aspect of the creation of the final car model (Camaro ZL1).

The start of the training video covers the basics of setting up Blender's user interface for the most efficient workflow when modeling the car.  Christopher goes over some of the most important preference settings that he uses to make his job easier when carrying out the tasks required when modeling.  He also goes over some basic performance suggestions which help to keep Blender working as smoothly as possible.

With the basics of Blender's interface and preference settings covered he moves on to a short explanation of some of Blender's new features and how you can most effectively use them.  Specifically covered are Blender's BMesh NGON features, the Knife Tool use and Blender Bridging tool.  Also covered was an effective way to make and fill faces.  I found the explanation of Blender's Knife tool very interesting because I learned it could be used to Join edge together which I didn't know previously, I only knew about the J key.  So in my case these basics really helped me.

Having covered some prelimanaries of using Blender the training videos move on to the tasks required to start modeling of the car.

The first stage is setting up the Blueprint reference images which will be used throughout to accurately model the Camaro.

Christopher uses image planes for the display reference images for the front, side, top and back of the car.  This method is very effective and allows him to display background references images at an angle, which he would not have been able to do if he had used Blender's default background 3D Viewport image display method.

Having setup the Blueprint reference images Christopher explains the different types of projection snapping and shrinkwrapping tools Blender has and how to use them in useful ways when constructing car body surfaces.

I especially enjoy watching him demonstrate how to cut holes in curved surfaces, a task which is often difficult to get right.  He also demonstrates are very simple but effective way of modeling a car tire tread.  Which is later used again to make a fully modeled tire tread.  All of this done with very basic modifiers (curve, array and simple deform).

The remaining videos cover modeling the different parts of the car,  All the visible parts that make up the car are modeled, even less visible things like mufflers and break dics of the car are modeled to a very high standard, while keeping the amount of vertice, edges and faces to the minimum needed to get the job done.

Each different section of the car has its own separate video. Allowing you to focus on a speific part of the car modeling if you want to.

In the process of modeling the car a lot of Blender's different features and tools are covered.  So if you didn't know how to use them before starting watching, you will by the end of watching the videos.

Once the modeling of the car is almost finished Christopher goes over the car one more time fixing any mistakes and explaining why he is doing so.  This helps to show how you can fix issues you may encounter when modeling and some of the solutions.

After the actual modeling of all the car parts is completed, the tutorials move on to texturing the finished car model.  Giving it an effective looking car paint shaded look using Blender Internal's Materials and Material Nodes system.  Blender Cycles is not used to do the texturing and shading of the car, but the end result does not suffer from this.

The next topic covered is Studio setup, for lighting and background image setup, and getting Blender to create clay renders of the final car model.

After the various studio setup tasks such as lighting, background, render settings, and world settings are covered, final post processing effects are covered.

This involved the compositor.  The video tutorials for this part of Blender were short but effective and helped to give the final renders of the car more visual appeal.

Overall an excellent Car modelng, shading and texturing tutorial, very easy to follow and well produced.

I couldn't see any real problems or missing topics.  Some may argue it would have been better to use Cycles to do the shading and texturing but I think in this case Blender Internal was all that is needed, as the end result would not have looked any better in Cycles.

Go buy it!

Review Score 95%

Christopher Plush - Environment Modeling and Texturing - Tutorial Video Review

Recently a new Blender 2.5 training website come into existance, www.cgmasters.net. Run by Lee Salvemini and Christopher Plush, both extremely talented, professional Blender users with lots of experience in big budget productions (Sintel, Yo-Frankie to name just a few of the ones Blender users will know about).

They currently have 2 Blender products available on their website. In this review I will be reviewing their Environment Modeling and Texturing Tutorial Video.

Product Specifications:

• Name: Environment Modeling and Texturing
• Author: Christopher Plush
• Price: $60 (18 Dec 2010)
• Type: Downloadable Tutorial Video
• Length: 14 Hours Roughly

There are two versions of this tutorial video, one comes on a physical DVD and the other is in downloadable form, both are the same price and have exactly the same content. I purchased the downloadable version, it's a very large download, so if you don't have a very fast internet connection I would recommend getting the DVD version.

Once the files are downloaded you can extract their contents and open the files in your web browser. I was using Firefox and running on a Fedora Linux system and everything worked very well for me.

With the tutorial page open you are presented with 12 video sections:

• Chapter 01 - Tool Overview
• Chapter 02 - Modeling the Base Environment
• Chapter 03 - Unwrapping the Environment
• Chapter 04 - Environment Destruction
• Chapter 05 - More Construction
• Chapter 06 - Environment Texturing and Materials
• Chapter 07 - More Texturing and Details
• Chapter 08 - Making the Props
• Chapter 09 - Lighting and World Settings
• Chapter 10 - Light Maps
• Chapter 11 - Final Details
• Chapter 12 - Post Processing Filters and FX

Each video can be played in the embedded flash player presented on the webpage, and here is the first minor problem I encountered. For some reason the flash video player plays the videos at a lower resolution than they are actually encoded at. As a result if you use the flash player that's embedded in the webpage to play the videos at fullscreen they are very unclear to view. Fortunately it is possible to play the full higher resolution versions of the videos and when you do they are very well encoded and very easy to view.

Each video is a combination of realtime video viewing and time lapse viewing of the texturing and modeling process's involved. Nothing is skipped and everything is recorded in minute detail.

Each tutorial video builds on the previous one, resulting in construction of a very detailed interior barn scene. Which includes creating and texturing all the props contained inside the barn as well as the barn structure itself. The barn is modeled so that it can be used within the Blender Game Engine, but even if you have no interest in the Blender Game Engine at all, the techniques that are demonstrated will allow a modeler to create very detailed looking models, that are very low poly and very memory efficient.

By the time you have finished watching all the videos, you will have seen very good demonstrations of modeling and texturing techniques of a professional level, and you will be able to bake every kind of normal, texture and shadow map known to man and follow along in creating all the items!

The website says that the tutorial videos are aimed at a Intermediate level Blender user, though I feel that everything is explained so well and clearly when needed that even a Blender beginner would be able to get something from these videos. If you are an Intermediate Blender user you will probably also pick up a lot of new tricks and techniques.

Another slight issue I have with the tutorials, is that there is a lot of use of Photoshop and an NVIDIA Normal Map generator. It would have been nice if Gimp and a Gimp Normal Map Generator had been used, as they are open source and obviously available to many more users, and are just as powerful. Fortunately you can pretty much do all the stuff shown in Photoshop in Gimp and the NVIDIA Normal Map generator can be replaced by the Gimp equivalent. So that is why I say it's a very small issue. If you want to use Gimp you can.

I feel their website really undersells the amount of content covered in the videos, their website really would benefit from having a more detailed table of content as to exactly what objects, props and texture are created, the chapter list really doesn't contain enough detail. Still that's the kind of surprise I like, getting more than I was expecting.

These tutorials are very detailed, of a high quality level and are well worth the price in my opinion, if you are interested in game environment creation or just want to use some of the relevant techniques for memory efficient modeling this is a must have Video tutorial.

I will certainly put www.cgmaster.net on my list of sites to keep an eye on! Can't wait to see what they come up with next.

Review Score 89%